Other forms: lobbying, lobbied, lobbies
A lobby is the open room just inside the main doors of a large building — a hotel lobby, the lobby of the theatre, wait in the lobby.
The political sense comes from the same room and is now at least as common: to lobby is to try to influence politicians, and a lobby is an organised group doing it — the farming lobby, the gun lobby. The connection is literal: campaigners waited in the lobbies of Parliament to catch members as they passed. In the House of Commons the division lobbies are where members walk to record a vote, which is why to be lobbied and to go through the lobby are both real parliamentary events.
1nounlobbyThe open room just inside the entrance of a large building.
“They waited in the lobby for twenty minutes.”
synonyms: foyer, entrance hall
2verbpersuadeTo try to persuade politicians to support something.
“The group has lobbied for the change since 2015.”
3nounorganisedAn organised group trying to influence policy.
“The transport lobby got most of what it asked for.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
lobby is an entrance room, or a pressure group.
Medieval Latin lobia meant a covered walk or gallery, from a Germanic word for an arbour — the same root as lodge and leaf. The room came first, the verb came from people loitering in it, and the industry came from the verb.
Proto-Indo-European
*lewbʰ- (cut off)
Frankish
*laubijā — arbour, shelter
Medieval Latin
lobia
English, today
lobby
Built from
From Medieval Latin lobia, lobium, laubia (“a portico, covered way, gallery”), borrowed from Frankish laubijā (“arbour, shelter”), related to Old English lēaf (“foliage”). More at leaf. a doublet of leaf and lodge and loggia. Political sense derives from the entrance hall of legislatures, where people traditionally tried to influence legislators because it was the most convenient place to meet them.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA